Pronounced Dead

Her body was cold and stiff. No pulse. No respiration. Everybody thought Nancy Vitale was dead. They were wrong. More than two hours after the Brooklyn woman was officially pronounced dead Monday night, a medical examiner noticed she was breathing. The 40-year-old teacher emerged from a coma Wednesday morning. She was in critical condition at Coney Island Hospital but was improving, said hospital spokesman Ken Kiernan. Authorities are trying to sort out how the mix-up happened. The city's Emergency Medical Service team that responded to the scene ''followed all EMS guidelines and New York state procedures involved in giving a presumptive diagnosis of death,'' EMS spokeswoman Lynn Schulman said.

Rescuers were unable to save a 68-year-old woman found unresponsive in a backyard pool in the Ormond Beach area Tuesday, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office said. The victim identified as New York resident Linda Raszl was in town visiting her son, who lives at the house in the Halifax Plantation community where she found, the sheriff's office said. Witnesses said Raszl had gone for a swim in the screen-enclosed pool and was later found by her son in the water, motionless and unresponsive.

A 47-year-old Kissimmee man was pronounced dead Saturday after being pulled from the surf in Cocoa Beach, police said. Lifeguards at Shepard Park pulled the unresponsive victim from the waves about 5 p.m. and performed CPR, to no avail. He was pronounced dead at 5:35 p.m. at Cape Canaveral Hospital. His identity was not immediately released.

Florida Highway Patrol troopers identified the Ormond Beach woman killed Sunday night while riding her moped scooter. Meghan Wright, 55, died after hitting a car that turned in front of her. She was riding southbound on Ocean Shore Boulevard at about 8:40 p.m. when a Jeep headed in the other direction turned left into Wright's path. The scooter struck the side of the Jeep, which was driven by Ormond Beach resident Jeannine Poole, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Poole was not injured.

An Ormond Beach teenager remained in critical condition Saturday after an early-morning car crash that killed his older brother and another boy, authorities said. The accident happened at 12:30 a.m. in the 600 block of John Anderson Drive, near the Halifax River, Ormond Beach police said. Adam W. Hylan, 18, was driving Christopher J. Hubler, 17, and Alex Hubler, 15. Hylan was a half-mile from the Hublers' home when he failed to negotiate a curve and lost control of the 1994 Pontiac. It slid off the west shoulder of the road and hit a large oak tree.

YOUNGSTER DIES. Jeffrey Neal, an eighth-grade football player who attended Henderson Junior High School in Starkville, Miss., died following practice. David DeRuzzo, Starkville Public Schools superintendent, said that Neal, 13, was pronounced dead in Oktiebeha County Hospital's emergency room, where he was taken because of stomach and leg cramps.

JACKSONVILLE -- A rescue squad pronounced a woman dead of an apparent suicide, but she was found breathing two hours later. The woman later died at a hospital -- after being pronounced dead a second time but found breathing again. Kathryn Hancock-Julien, 36, was presumed to be dead in her hotel room Tuesday, and arrangements were made to take her body to the Medical Examiner's Office. The woman instead was rushed to St. Luke's Hospital after a forensic investigator saw her chin move. She was pronounced dead for a second time at the hospital after resuscitation attempts were thought to have failed but was seen breathing again a short time later.

Orange County -- An Orange County man was pronounced dead Friday morning after a neighbor discovered him lying behind his house, a sheriff's spokesman said Friday. Terrance T. Jones, 25, was found by a neighbor on South Westmoreland Drive near 22nd Street about 7:30 a.m. He was in the dirt near the home's rear entrance. Investigators think he was shot once at close range, spokesman Jim Solomons said. Jones was pronounced dead at the scene. Three people who were inside the house provided little information to investigators, Solomons said.

ORANGE COUNTY---Orange County homicide detectives were investigating the deaths of two people found fatally wounded Monday evening at an office in the Pine Hills neighborhood, a sheriff's spokeswoman said. An employee at Orlando Ultimate Healthcare found the man and woman, whose names were not released, about 6:15 p.m., Cpl. Susan Soto said. Both victims worked at the business, at 6001 Silver Star Road, Soto said. One was taken by ambulance to Orlando Regional Medical Center and pronounced dead.

TWO DEAD. An unidentified man and woman died early Sunday in a car accident in southwest Orange County. Shortly before 1 a.m., the driver of the car, a 70-year-old man, lost control of the vehicle as he rounded a curve in the southbound lane of Dr. Phillips Boulevard at Della Drive, the Florida Highway Patrol reported. He was later pronounced dead at Sand Lake Hospital. A 47-year-old female passenger was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center where she was pronounced dead.

A woman who ran a red light smashed into a vehicle, killing a passenger and critically injuring the driver early Saturday on Colonial Drive, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Salvador Sapeg Jr., 23, was pronounced dead at Florida Hospital East after the 3:49 a.m. crash near the intersection of State Road 50 and State Road 408, troopers said. The victim was a passenger in a Saab sedan carrying two others that was traveling east on S.R. 50 and entered the intersection with S.R. 408. The driver, 21-year-old Cesar Carmona, had a green light when he collided with Shawna Lee Ormsby's Dodge Avenger after she sped through the red light coming off the S.R. 408 exit ramp.

Deputies found a pregnant Alexis Boyce sitting in a chair with her hands in her lap and a bullet in her head. Her husband, Michael Boyce, told Orange County sheriff's detectives depression drove his 23-year-old wife to suicide Thursday - but his story didn't stand up to questioning. Alexis Boyce - eight months pregnant with twin boys - was rushed to the hospital, where she and one of her sons were pronounced dead. The surviving infant remains in critical condition in the neonatal intensive care unit at Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies.

An Alabama man is dead after suffering a medical episode that caused him to lose consciouness and crash the vehicle he was driving into the rear of two other automobiles late Thursday, troopers said. Robert T. Smith, 69, of Huntsville, Ala., was pronounced dead at Celebration Hospital following a crash in which a 70-year-old woman was a passenger in the vehicle. Florida Highway Patrol's Sgt. Kim Montes said Smith was heading southbound on State Road 535 about 11 p.m. when he passed out and the car continued to roll forward to the intersection with Meadow Creek Drive.

A man with a long history of traffic infractions was arrested Wednesday in the hit-and-run deaths of two people on State Road 44 in New Smyrna Beach. Brian Dale Kennedy, 37, of Edgewater was arrested on charges of leaving the scene of a fatal accident and driving with a suspended license, police Chief George Markert said at a news conference. He told investigators he thought he hit a deer, according to an arrest report released today. Officers located a damaged work van about 12:30 p.m. in Edgewater that they think was involved in the crash, Markert said.

A 57-year-old St. Cloud man who was heading the wrong direction on U.S. Highway 192 on his motorcycle was killed in a head-on collision late Monday, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Mathew Backus, 57, was pronounced dead at the scene after he smashed into the front of Toni Jernigan's Chevrolet four-door about 10:50 p.m. near Pine Grove Road in Osceola County. Jernigan, 44, of Boynton Beach was heading the eastbound with two children inside when she spotted Backus on his 1979 Harley Davidson coming at her in the opposite direction and tried to avoid him, said FHP spokeswoman Sgt. Kim Montes.

A Kissimmee woman was killed early Wednesday after her minivan struck a tree and overturned on Southport Drive, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Shari Rivera, 49, was pronounced dead at Osceola Regional Medical Center after her Dodge minivan left westbound Southport Drive, struck a tree and overturned about 6:20 a.m. near Hunt Road. Troopers are investigating the crash, said FHP spokeswoman Sgt. Kim Montes. Rivera was wearing a seatbelt, the crash report said.

A elderly man about to undergo brain surgery shot and killed his ailing wife and then turned the revolver on himself early Saturday in a retirement community near Leesburg, Lake County sheriff's investigators said. Robert M. Yonke, 72, of the Highland Lakes subdivision, was pronounced dead at Leesburg Regional Medical Center. Yonke's wife, Marguerite Yonke, 71, was pronounced dead at the scene in the couple's bed, Detective Ken Adams said. She had Alzheimer's disease. The couple had no children.

WINTER SPRINGS -- Investigators are trying to determine why two brothers, ages 10 and 15, died within days of each other, police said. On July 5, Terry Adair, 10, was pronounced dead at his home at 133 Garden Drive. On July 12, Jerry Adair, 15, was also pronounced dead at home. Police said they do not know why the children died. Winter Springs police Capt. Mike Noland said the deaths are suspicious, but there is no evidence of foul play. Investigators are awaiting autopsy results, which will take about six weeks, Noland said.

A 17-year-old was killed late Friday after being struck and run over by three vehicles while trying to cross a road in south Orange County, the Florida Highway Patrol said. Steven Anthony Mieses, 17, was pronounced dead about 10:07 p.m. at the scene of the crash at the intersection of Landstar Boulevard and Wetherbee Road. Mieses attempted to cross Wetherbee Road when he walked into the path of Mitsubishi driven by 29-year-old Jose Shelvin of Orlando, according to FHP spokeswoman Sgt. Kim Montes.

Orlando Police released photographs of two of the three victims gunned down in a shooting at an apartment complex early Tuesday. Khoy Mae Williams, 24, and Jonathan Cook, 17, were shot to death about 1:47 a.m. while they were walking to an apartment in the Middlebrook Farms apartment complex near Conroy Road, police said. A third victim, a 22-year-old male friend of Cook and Williams, suffered non-life threatening gunshot wounds after the group was ambushed by one or more men with guns in the 4000 block of Middlebrook Road, according to Sgt. Jim Young, a police spokesman.